Father and daughter among 3 dead in helicopter crash near Drummondville

The family of two of the three people who died in a helicopter crash northeast of Montreal said Friday that words cannot fully describe the feelings of desolation and incomprehension they are experiencing.

DRUMMONDVILLE — The family of two of the three people who died in a helicopter crash northeast of Montreal said Friday that words cannot fully describe the feelings of desolation and incomprehension they are experiencing.

Jean-Claude Mailhot and his daughter Janie, along with Nathalie Desrosiers, died Thursday after a helicopter they were travelling in crashed in a snow-covered field just north of Drummondville.

Police said Friday the crash that killed everyone on board was not likely due to a criminal act, but investigators still didn’t know what caused the four-seater Robinson R44-model helicopter to go down.

The three were travelling from Quebec’s Beauce region to the Lanaudiere when the aircraft crashed Thursday around 9 p.m.

“Our father and our sister died in a tragic accident last night,” read a statement sent to the media Friday and signed by Tommy, Vincent and Alexandrine Mailhot.

“Words do not suffice to express the desolation and incomprehension that an event like this can bring.”

Jean-Claude, a father of four and grandfather of six, was described as a man “appreciated by everyone, a respected and engaged entrepreneur in his community.”

Janie’s siblings said their sister was a mother of two young daughters “who had a contagious love for life and was extremely generous.

“We would also like to send our most sincere condolences to the family and friends of Nathalie Desrosiers,” the third person who died in the crash, the Mailhot family said in the statement.

As the first full day of investigations neared its conclusion, there was little information available on what caused the helicopter to crash along the banks of the St-François River, about 100 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Provincial police spokesman Hugo Fournier said during an interview that police were preparing to leave the scene just before 4 p.m., adding that the next step was to figure out how to extricate the wreckage of the helicopter from the remote field.

First responders had a difficult time getting to the scene because of deep snow. A snow-removal machine was brought in from the city of Drummondville to help them get to the site.

Marc Descoteaux, who owns a farm not far from where the helicopter crashed, said he smelled smoke as he did some work Thursday evening.

“It was a burning smell, not a wood-burning smell but more like metal or solder,” Descoteaux said in a phone interview. “Before going home, I saw a fire in the middle of a field about 800 metres from my house.”

Thinking it was a snowmobile on fire, Descoteaux called his nephew to go have a look.

His nephew accessed the area by snowmobile. Realizing it was a helicopter, Descoteaux said they called police.

“A helicopter at night in the neighbourhood is very rare,” he said of his rural area. “We get very few cars at night, let alone helicopters.”

His brother used a snowblower to make a path for the first officers and emergency personnel at the scene.

Fournier said investigators are considering if the weather was a factor in the crash.

Transportation Safety Board investigators were also on the scene on Friday.

One of those investigators, Pierre Gavillet, said it was too soon to know whether the crash occurred at high speed.

“At first glance we try to see the marks in the snow,” he told reporters at the scene around midday. “We try to establish the flight trajectory before the impact.”

Gavillet said the investigators would gather information on the weather, the pilot’s qualifications and the body of the chopper, which he said was heavily damaged.

He said it wasn’t clear whether the helicopter would need to be sent to the Transportation Safety Board’s lab for further analysis.

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